


The morning after the night before

by Squishmitten



Series: Blame it on the booze [2]
Category: Holby City
Genre: F/F, post alcohol memory loss, the follow up that was never meant to be
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-20
Updated: 2018-08-20
Packaged: 2019-06-30 03:17:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,654
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15743109
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Squishmitten/pseuds/Squishmitten
Summary: So after the events of the previous night, Serena and Bernie have to face each other in the cold light of day.





	The morning after the night before

**Author's Note:**

  * For [MrsPeel](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MrsPeel/gifts).



> So here is the continuation to 'Not exactly Mills & Boon' that I never had any intention of writing!  
> Mrs Peel gets the (blame) credit for their comment which included their ideas of what might have happened.  
> It gave me the inspiration for this.

Serena was sitting at the table, mug in hand.

“Erm, good morning, Serena,” said Bernie, hesitantly. 

At the sound of Bernie’s voice, Serena started violently, and slopped coffee down her front.

“Shit, shit, shit!” Serena jumped up to grab for something to blot up the liquid.

Bernie went into trauma autopilot, stepped forward and yanked the t-shirt off over Serena’s head without even thinking. She strode over to the sink, swiftly ran it under the tap and was back by Serena’s side, holding the cold and dripping cloth to Serena’s chest. 

“Bernie! Berenice Wolfe, for Christ’s sake, the coffee was only bloody tepid. Get off, you’re soaking me.” 

Serena shivered as cold water ran down her torso and began to soak into her waistband. She grabbed the sopping garment out of Bernie’s hands and threw it in the sink. Hands on hips, she glared at the other woman, then seeing the look on Bernie’s face, relented.

“Thank you for the swift action Bernie, but it really wasn’t necessary. No harm done though, eh?” Serena said, in a softer tone.

She wondered why Bernie wouldn't even look at her. ‘Oh god, maybe she’s remembering what happened last night. What the hell did I do?’ Serena thought to herself. Until it dawned on her that she was standing in front of Bernie Wolfe, in her soaking wet bra.

She went to the cupboard, retrieved the container of ground coffee and placed it next to the kettle. 

“Look, why don’t you get another pot of coffee going while I go and sort myself out? Okay?” Serena asked a red-faced Bernie, who just nodded mutely.

Heading upstairs, Serena decided she would take the opportunity to have a very quick shower. It wouldn’t be the long, hot shower she had craved earlier. But then again, the strong coffee she had consumed, combined with the earlier pain killers, had helped to combat at least some of the hangover. 

Serena went into the en suite, stripped off, and threw her clothes in the laundry hamper. She leant against the sink and looked at herself in the mirror.

“So now, as well as having shared a bed with Bernie, shared a bed with Bernie whilst naked, in fact. As well as that, you have now stood in front of her in your bra. A bra that had been rendered almost completely transparent by moisture. After she had ripped your t-shirt off,” she shook her head. “Just when I thought things couldn’t get any more awkward!”

Her eyes drifted downwards, as she looked at her reflection. 

“Oh _fuck,_ ” she whispered.

Along the length of each of her collar bones were a series of livid purple and red love bites. Looking further down, Serena also saw several more on her breasts. 

“Well, I think that answers a few questions about last night.”

Serena turned away from the mirror, turned the shower on, and adjusted the temperature higher than usual. She stepped under the spray and armed with her new knowledge, tried again to remember more about the night before. When she had realised she was sharing her bed with someone, she had decided that it didn’t feel like she’d had sex. Serena huffed in amusement at her own stupidity. 

“You didn’t feel like you’d had sex. With a man. Didn’t consider what the morning after the night before might feel like with another woman, did you?” 

She quickly shampooed her hair, cleansed her face and then began to wash. As she ran soapy hands across her wet skin, she couldn’t help imagine Bernie’s hands travelling over the same flesh the night before.

“Get a grip, Campbell. It’s not exactly wise to let your imagination run away with you, when you have to go back downstairs and face her in a few minutes.”

Serena rinsed the suds away, switched off the water and stepped out of the shower cubicle. She quickly towelled herself dry and gathered clean clothes. Instead of re-dressing in casual clothes, she put on the black trousers, camisole and silky shirt combo that was her equivalent of a work uniform. She felt like she needed some semblance of her usual authority and armour and hopefully this would help.

She sat at her dressing table and ran a comb through her damp hair. Staring in the mirror, she looked to see if she could spot the marks that had been left the night before. Damn. It looked like she would be using a lot of concealer and buttoning her blouses right the way up for a while.

Serena had to laugh. Even back when she was a teenager, when love bites were quite common amongst the girls of St Winnie’s, she had never once allowed a boy to mark her skin. Yet another first in Serena’s life that Bernie had achieved. 

 

Bernie busied herself making coffee. The unfamiliar actions of cleaning out the cafetière weren’t enough to stop her mind from bouncing around with thoughts of Serena. She had a feeling that even if she had been in the middle of performing the most difficult surgery of her life, she would still be thinking about Serena Campbell.

While the kettle boiled, Bernie went back out into the hall. She glanced up the stairs and could hear the faint sounds of a shower running. Tried (and failed) not to imagine a naked and wet Serena. 

Bernie went into the small downstairs loo and looked in the mirror. She had to know. Unbuttoning her white shirt, she looked at her herself. Well at least Serena wasn’t the only one who had been marked last night. Very similar to what she had seen on her co-lead, Bernie had a trail of red and purple marks across her clavicles. Further down, at the top of her breast, there was even a full bite mark, complete with the imprint of teeth. Bernie snorted. Wow, Serena was clearly a bit of an animal! 

Returning to the kitchen, Bernie poured the freshly boiled water into the cafetière and placed it and two mugs on the table. She took Serena’s used mug to the sink. Ah yes, the t-shirt. She ran the tap over the wet cotton until the water was no longer tinted brown and then wrung it out and placed it on the draining board. 

With nothing left to occupy her, she sat at the kitchen table and pulled her phone out of her pocket. She kept quietly hoping that one of these days there would be a text from one of her kids. Damn, it looked like her phone battery had died. She had spotted the familiar white cable plugged into one of the sockets by the microwave and so got up to put her mobile on charge.

Bernie turned to see Serena in the doorway.

“Ah, I was just…” she trailed off and gestured towards her mobile.

“That’s fine, Bernie. Help yourself. Actually, I should probably find my phone. Excuse me a moment.” 

Serena returned a minute later, empty handed.

“It looks like mine must have died last night as well. I’ve left it on charge in the living room.” 

They both sat at the table and Serena poured them each a mug of coffee. Silence fell as they both wondered how to broach the subject of last night. How exactly do you ask someone, particularly your co-worker and allegedly platonic friend if they remember having drunken sex? 

“So, about last night…” Serena finally broke the silence. She waved her hand towards the row of bottles. “It looks like we drank rather a lot. There’s a particularly good Shiraz amongst them that I do slightly regret having no recollection of drinking.”

Serena was quite pleased with herself, managing to bring her lack of memory into conversation without any connection to what may or may not have happened in the bedroom. 

“Oh, er that’s a shame. Show me which one it is and I’ll buy you another bottle.” 

“Don’t be silly, it’s not your fault we guzzled it. I’m sure we both enjoyed it,” she took a deep breath. “Look… There’s no point in us beating around the bush, Bernie. Do you remember what happened last night? I’m embarrassed to admit that I have very little memory of much after we got back here from Albie’s. I feel like a bloody teenager after a cider binge. Love bites and all!” Serena narrowed her eyes at Bernie with the mention of the hickeys.

“I remember us drinking wine and having a takeaway and that’s about all. And don’t give me that look, Serena Campbell. You’re hardly blameless yourself. Look at the state of me!” Bernie hurriedly unbuttoned her shirt and pulled it off her shoulders. 

Serena gasped. Had she really left that bite mark on Bernie’s breast? She buried her head in her hands.

“I’m so sorry, Bernie,” she groaned, the words muffled.

Bernie shuffled her chair around the table until she was close enough to put her arm around Serena’s shoulders.

“Come on Serena, I clearly gave as good as I got. Please don’t be upset. I’m sure we can put this behind us.” 

Serena muttered something, face still obscured. Bernie asked her to repeat herself. “I’m sorry, what was that?”

Serena sat upright and turned in her chair until she was face to face with Bernie.

“I said, what if I don’t _want_ to put it behind us? What if I don’t want to keep things confined to theatre? I… I know I made a fool of myself yesterday, pretending to have kissed a woman in Shoreditch-”

“Stepney.”

“Yes, thank you. In Stepney. I know I didn’t handle things at all well. The thing is though, Bernie… The thing is, I really like you.”

“I like you too, Serena.” 

“No, I mean I _like_ like you.” 

Bernie looked confused, and Serena sighed in frustration.

“Bernie Wolfe, I fancy the pants off you. Does that make it any clearer? I really don’t want to keep things confined to theatre. What I do want to do, right now, in spite of being deep into one of the worst hangovers I’ve had in years, is kiss you. A lot.”

So she did. 

A lot.

 

After the growling of both their stomachs became too loud to ignore any longer, they reluctantly drew apart.

“Shall I make us bacon sandwiches? I will need to remember to buy some more though, as Saturday morning is Jason’s bacon sarnie breakfast.” 

While Serena moved around getting the necessary components together, Bernie rose and went over to her phone to switch it on. She wasn’t expecting there to be anything waiting for her on it, but she needed to distract herself with something before she pulled Serena back into her arms, bacon be damned. 

Nope, it took too long to boot up and therefore failed as a distraction. 

She went up behind Serena, wrapped her arms around the brunette’s waist and nuzzled her neck. 

“No more marks please, Ms Wolfe! Especially not on my neck.” Nonetheless, she tipped her head to the side in order to aid access for Bernie's questing lips.

“Mmmm. You need to stop distracting me before I burn the bacon, darling. Why don’t you butter some bread?”

Bernie felt a thrill go through her at the sound of Serena calling her darling. With a faux grumpy growl, she untangled her arms from around Serena and reached for the loaf of bread on the countertop.

 

They pushed their plates away with a happy sigh. There was nothing quite like a nice bit of bacon to help with the after-effects of a night on the booze.

“Did I hear the notifications alert going off on your phone earlier, Bernie?” Serena asked, idly.

“Did it? I was a little distracted,” she smirked, before getting up and retrieving her mobile. 

Sitting back down, she put her arm around Serena, and toyed gently with her earlobe as she unlocked her phone. She loved the little sounds of pleasure Serena was making, and the way she leaned into Bernie’s touch. Bernie looked at her phone and frowned. 

“A text from Dom. I wonder what he wants,” she opened the message, and was none the wiser. “He’s texted ‘You are a dark horse, Ms Wolfe! WhatsApp was quite the revelation.’ What on Earth is WhatsApp, Serena?”

“It’s a messaging app. Don’t you have it installed? Here, let me look.” Serena reached out, and Bernie handed the mobile over. “Yes, here it is. You do have a lot of notifications on it for someone who didn’t even know the app existed.” 

Serena suddenly stiffened and sat up straight. Without another word, she stood and walked out of the room. Moments later, she called out to Bernie.

“Can you come in here Bernie, please.”

Bernie walked through to the living room to see Serena perched on the sofa, Bernie’s phone in one hand, and her own in the other. She sat beside the obviously perturbed woman.

“What’s wrong Serena? What’s happened?”

“Let’s just say that any hope we may possibly have harboured of keeping the new, non-professional side of our relationship quiet, might well have gone right out the window last night.” 

Holding the phones up so Bernie could see the screens, she scrolled back on both, showing a series of selfies of both of them, some separately and some together.

“Serena… I… I don’t…”

“Nor do I Bernie. Don’t remember us taking them and I certainly don’t remember sending them to Ric bloody Griffin! I also don’t remember us installing the app on your phone either, so that you could apparently send them to Dominic Copeland.”

“I’m… I’m so sorry, Serena.” Bernie slumped back on the sofa, tears in her eyes. “I know how much you hate hospital gossip.”

Serena put the phones down and took Bernie in her arms.

“Come on darling, don’t blame yourself, we both sent them. Plus, given you hadn’t even heard of WhatsApp before today, I must have introduced you to it last night. Besides, it could be worse.”

“How? How could it be worse?” Bernie asked, plaintively.

Serena thought for a few moments.

“Well, let’s see… Oh, I know, I have several different WhatsApp groups set up, including one that includes every single consultant in Holby. Apart from you, that is. I could have shared the pictures with that group, rather than just with Ric. I saw on your phone that Marcus and both your children also have WhatsApp. You could have sent pictures to them, but you didn’t. The other thing that occurs to me is that at least neither of us took any selfies in the bedroom.” Serena blushed a little at the thought of them taking pictures in the bedroom.

Bernie sat up and reached for her phone, to take a proper look at what she had sent to Dom the night before. Apart from the photos, it looked like she hadn’t done much more than send an awful lot of little smiley faces, tiny animals and lots and lots of hearts. She said as much to Serena, who also looked back at what she had sent to Ric.

“There’s nothing from either of us here that can’t be explained away as a drunken night shared by two friends, Serena. As long as we both keep quiet, and umm, keep covered up, there needn’t be any gossip.” Bernie blew out a relieved breath.

“You’re quite right Bernie. For now at least.”

Bernie was confused, “For now?”

“Yes, for now. We can keep this under wraps, but only until your messy divorce is finalised. After that, I don’t want to hide. I like you an awful lot Bernie Wolfe, and I don’t want to skulk about. Gossips be damned. Now I don’t know about you, but I really, really fancy a lie down and a cuddle.”

Serena stood and held her hand out to Bernie.

“Whatever you say, Serena. Whatever you say.”

**Author's Note:**

> 


End file.
